Research Engineer

About Tessl

Tessl is a Series A startup based in London, founded byGuy Podjarny, who also founded dev-first security companySnyk.

At Tessl, we believe AI will fundamentally change the way software is developed, beyond short-term wins like code generation and bug fixing. As a result, we’re reimagining the software creation process to be truly “AI native,” enabling a whole host of ground-breaking improvements that we believe will transform our industry.

As an early member of our team, you’ll have the opportunity to shape the future of how software is created and maintained.

Overview of role

As a Research Engineer in our early team, you’ll push at the boundaries of what’s possible with LLMs and AI, creating new technology that will transform the way that developers work. You’ll be expected to bring a wealth of ambitious and novel ideas, deep experience with evaluation and experimentation of ML based systems, and the ability to ship your working ideas into production.

You’ll report to our head of AI Engineering and collaborate closely with our wider engineering team as well as product and design, a team with a wealth of experience in delivering tools for developers that work at scale.

As an early member of our team, you’ll help us devise our strategy and tooling, and keep us at the cutting edge of what’s possible even as that rapidly evolves.

What we’re looking for

We’re looking for someone who is as excited as we are to be part of a dynamic team that is shaping the future of AI and software development.

Essential

1. 5+ years building and shipping AI and ML products, including deep experience with unstructured data such as text or code, and recent experience with LLMs.
2. Experience evaluating the performance of models with vibes, benchmarks and in production systems. Able to clearly present and explain results, and help define what works and what doesn’t.
3. Experience building data sets for training, evaluating or fine tuning models - both in terms of building data pipelines and in building analysis.
4. Experience using the latest research and community best practices in your day-to-day work.
5. Enjoy coding and have shipped production quality code (tested, reusable, etc.) in at least one language. Also comfortable scripting and prototyping quick solutions.
6. Deeply curious about AI and excited about the future of software engineering.

Nice to have

1. Deeper experience in wrangling LLMs, fine-tuning models, building RAG systems, benchmarking large systems, or advanced prompting techniques.
2. Masters or PhD in AI, Machine Learning or relevant computational science degree, or equivalent.
3. Experience training and fine-tuning models for code generation in particular, or experience using them in systems or products.
4. Programming language geek who’s fascinated by the structure of code and the different ways we communicate with computers.
5. Experience working in fast-paced, high growth environments, with a high bias towards fast execution and quick iteration.
6. Have a cool project to show us (GitHub links welcome!) and a well-articulated answer to the question “Why Tessl?”

What you’ll do

No two days will be the same at Tessl! You’ll have a high level of autonomy and be able to make decisions based on what you believe will help you deliver the most success. Here’s an insight into some of the things you’ll be doing:

1. Read a recent academic paper, distill learnings into ideas for experiments to try, and present this to the team.
2. Configure our code generation suite to use a new method, run through our benchmarks to evaluate performance.
3. Ship an update to a key model, and evaluate the rollout.
4. Set up tooling for us to fine-tune an LLM, and define metrics to measure progress.
5. Debate the right tooling and schema for data collection from our product, and start building out the data pipelines we need.
6. Inspect pages of LLM outputs and work out how to measure drift in performance.
7. Experiment with an updated UX flow that allows different human input to the model.

Salary and benefits

We offer a competitive salary commensurate with experience and skills. We provide health insurance which extends to partners and dependents, as well as a pension.

Our office is based a couple of minutes away from King’s Cross station. It’s also pet-friendly, and we make sure to have regular socials such as team lunches, drinks and more.

Whilst we’re in building mode, currently all employees aim to be in the office 3 days a week - regularly Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Application Process

Here’s an outline of what you can expect during our interview process:

1. A screening call with a Tessl People team member.
2. A technical interview with Hiring Managers.
3. A take home technical test, exploring real data and problems.
4. An on-site session including whiteboarding and hands-on activities.
5. A 45 min company fit interview with the CEO.

We care deeply about the warm, inclusive environment we’re building at Tessl and we value diversity – we welcome applications from those typically underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this role but are not totally sure whether you’re the right person, do apply anyway!

Learn how we think and work

1. On Tessl, The AI Native Development Startup
2. Announcing Our $125M Series A for AI Native Software Development
3. On the Podcast: Intercom Co-Founder Des Traynor on AI Autonomy & what AI Native means

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